Conan TV buzz fizzles, but host a hit in return to 'Chi-Coco'

Moe Hunt of Lincoln, Ill. waits in the standby line outside the Chicago Theatre for the live taping of the Conan O'Brien Show as part of Just for Laughs festival. (E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune)

Last time Conan O'Brienplayed Chicago Theatre, he was a celebrated figure especially in young-adult culture, a show biz martyr who had won, then lost, the “Tonight Show” hosting job at NBC.

Contractually banned from TV for a time, he brought his touring theater show to the Chicago Theatre in May of 2010, and it was a triumph, offering hints of a future Conan who might be looser-limbed and more fully himself than during his brief, somewhat constricted tenure on “Tonight.”

Now O'Brien returns to the theater as, pretty much, just another talk show host on the road. The big ratings potential of that era's “Team Coco” furor has not materialized. And from his new home, “Conan,” on basic cable's TBS, he's had a harder time butting into the cultural conversation.

But Monday's first show of four — a tie-in with TBS's sponsorship of the Just for Laughs comedy festival taking over the city this week — was, once again, a triumph in that ornate and historic room. It may not play quite so well on TV, which tends to mute the impact of a live performance. But the crowd's affection, immediate, raucous, and lasting, showed that some of the Team Coco spirit remains here, at least, if not among Nielsen families.

Using Irish stepdancers, a surprise appearance from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a keen eye for the city, O'Brien's show managed to hit on Chicago touchstones without being cheap, obvious or jingoistic about it.

Sure, he began with a reference to baseball ineptitude, but it was a well-honed one, as he called the city “home of the 1908 world championship Chicago Cubs. Congratulations.”

There were almost obligatory (and separate) Oprah and Wacker Drive references. And Illinois Rep. Derrick Smith (D-Chicago), indicted on bribery charges, provided the launching pad for a sharper-than-usual political-corruption joke: “If he's found guilty, he could serve up to four years as the state's governor.”

The play on the heaviness of “Chicago food” was predictable but engaging enough: In the mainstream mind, Chicagoans eat hot dogs, deep-dish or Italian beef but never at Alinea or its refined brethren.

But his two main taped pieces went to entirely fresh locales.

A byproduct of first-rate observation and a willingness to get deeply silly was the idea — a gag that will run through the last taping Thursday — to show oddball items attempting to jump the airspace between the upraised halves of the State Street Bridge. Monday's was a 10-foot bratwurst on wheels, and, reader, it cleared it!

Playing on his own Irish bloodlines, O'Brien next showed his visit to the North Side's Irish American Heritage Center, a tour that demonstrated the lightning wit that vaulted him from, essentially, funniest guy in “The Simpsons'“ writing room to late-night host. “That's not a leprechaun, that's a burn victim,” he said, holding up one, red-faced tchotchke.

He visited, pointedly, all six of the bars installed in the center's former school building. And he pretended to try to learn Irish stepdancing from the Trinity Irish Dancers, an effort that led to clowning, pints of Guinness, clumsily kicking a dancer in the face and a Michael Flatley impersonation.

That taped piece was followed by those same dancers appearing live on stage at the Chicago and an O'Brien hug for the victim of his wayward foot, Erin Gradus, 16, a Milwaukee high school sophomore who's been dancing with Trinity since age 5.

Announced guest Jack McBrayer (“30 Rock,” ex of The Second City) showed that O'Brien is still not much of an interviewer. And sidekick Andy Richter, who's from Yorkville, Ill., and trained comedically in the city, didn't have much to do Monday. His role was taken by Emanuel. Perhaps not incidentally, O'Brien is represented by the agency Emanuel's brother, Ari, runs.

In a well-scripted bit, the mayor gave the host a Chicago quiz that went progressively further off the rails: Why did Al Capone move from New York to Chicago? “To study improv.” “What does the ‘2000' in ‘Blues Brothers 2000' stand for?” “The number of people that saw it.”

After the “Team Coco” furor in 2010, TBS probably thought it had signed a ratings dynamo. But although the show does very well in the non-traditional viewings favored by his younger demographic, only about 1 million watch the show nightly on TV. When O'Brien last brought his TV show here, to the Chicago Theatre in May, 2006, it was drawing about 2.4 million on NBC

Still, TBS recently re-upped O'Brien, who began there in November 2010, with a new contract lasting through 2014.